Poverty – Population Below 185% FPL
This indicator reports the percentage of the population living in households with income below 185% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). This indicator is relevant because poverty creates barriers to access including health services, healthy food, and other necessities that contribute to poor health status.
Note: The total population measurements for poverty reports are lower than population totals for some other indicators, as poverty data collection does not include people in group quarters. See “Show more details” for more information.
Source
Source Description
The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide survey designed to provide communities with reliable and timely social, economic, housing, and demographic data every year. The ACS has an annual sample size of about 3.5 million addresses, with survey information collected nearly every day of the year. Data are pooled across a calendar year to produce estimates for that year. As a result, ACS estimates reflect data that have been collected over a period of time rather than for a single point in time as in the decennial census, which is conducted every 10 years and provides population counts as of April 1. The Census Bureau combines 5 consecutive years of ACS data to produce estimates for geographic areas with fewer than 65,000 residents. These 5-year estimates represent data collected over a period of 60 months. Because the ACS is based on a sample, rather than all housing units and people, ACS estimates have a degree of uncertainty associated with them, called sampling error. In general, the larger the sample, the smaller the level of sampling error. Data users should be careful in drawing conclusions about small differences between two ACS estimates because they may not be statistically different.
For more information about this source, including data collection methodology and definitions, refer to the American Community Survey data user’s website.
Methodology
Population counts for socio-economic groups and total area population data are acquired from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). Data represent estimates for the 5-year period 2019-2023. Data are summarized to 2023 census tract boundaries. The ACS determines poverty status by comparing a person’s total family income (within the 12 months prior to the survey) with the poverty threshold for that person’s family size and composition. Specified poverty levels are obtained by multiplying the official thresholds by a specific factor. Poverty statistics are measured as a percentage of the total non-institutionalized population using the following formula:
Poverty status was determined for all people except institutionalized people, people in military group quarters, people in college dormitories, and unrelated individuals under 15 years old. These groups were excluded from the numerator and denominator when calculating poverty rates. For more information on the data reported in the American Community Survey, please see the complete American Community Survey 2023 Subject Definitions.